Clidastes

Clidastes (genus Clidastes), extinct ancient marine lizards belonging to a family of reptiles called mosasaurs. Clidastes fossils are found in marine rocks from the Late Cretaceous Period (99.6 million to 65.5 million years ago) in North America. Excellent specimens have been found in the chalk deposits of Kansas.

Clidastes was 4 metres (13 feet) or longer; the head alone was about 60 cm (24 inches) long and was equipped with many sharply pointed curved teeth. The neck was short, but the body and tail were long and relatively slender. This aquatic lizard probably swam by undulating its body in the same way that terrestrial lizards do. The limbs terminated in broad appendages that provided directional control as it moved through the water. Clidastes was clearly an efficiently swimming predator and probably fed mostly on fish as well as on ammonoids (a cephalopod similar to the present-day nautilus). Clidastes and other mosasaurs may have gone ashore to reproduce.

Learn More in these related articles:

any of more than 5,500 species of reptiles belonging in the order Squamata (which also includes snakes, suborder Serpentes). Lizards are scaly-skinned reptiles that are usually distinguished from snakes by the possession of legs, movable eyelids, and external ear openings. However, some traditional...

any member of the class Reptilia, the group of air-breathing vertebrates that have internal fertilization, amniotic development, and epidermal scales covering part or all of their body. The major groups of living reptiles—the turtles (order Testudines), tuatara (order Rhynchocephalia...

extinct aquatic lizards that attained a high degree of adaptation to the marine environment and were distributed worldwide during the Cretaceous Period (145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago). The mosasaurs competed with other marine reptiles —the plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs —for...